Nitros hope familiar foe yields a victory

Football: Glendale seeks first win of season against last team it beat during 2009 campaign.

September 23, 2010|By Grant Gordon, grant.gordon@latimes.com

GLENDALE — The following are previews of the area's upcoming high school football games this week.

Like Hoover High and Flintridge Prep heading into this week, Glendale's football team is still searching for its first win of the season.

Unfortunately for the Nitros and their faithful, it's a familiar situation.

Last season, Glendale began its 2009 campaign 0-2 before its nonleague finale against South Pasadena.

And once more, the Nitros are hoping that first win comes at the expense of the Tigers, who play host to Glendale on Friday at 7 p.m. at South Pasadena High.

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"They are a much improved football team, they are 2-0," said Glendale second-year Coach Alan Eberhart of South Pasadena at Tuesday's Glendale YMCA Quarterback Club. "That was the game that we won last year. We told our kids we are now one calendar year [removed] from our last win and it would be really nice to get another one."

Glendale's lone win a season ago was a 28-21 triumph over South Pasadena. It's currently on a nine-game losing streak.

With a closer-than-expected 21-10 loss to Cathedral in the first week a sign of an improved Glendale squad, last week's 40-17 loss to La Cañada was an admitted step back for the Nitros and Friday is clearly a big game in terms of improvement and positive momentum heading into Pacific League play.

"We now are going back to words like 'improve,' we're going back to words like 'we've gotta get better' and we're getting back again to the fundamentals of blocking and tackling," Eberhart said. "We thought we were onto something. Our kids are in good spirits, it's still early in the year. We've played one good one and one not so good one."

The biggest highlight against La Cañada was quarterback Alex Yoon, who ran for a game-high 156 yards and also threw a touchdown pass to Linden Anderson. However, four turnovers and shoddy tackling hassled the Nitros all night.

"Our kids had to decide either you step up or you step back and, unfortunately, we took the latter approach and La Cañada really ran all over us," Eberhart said. "They really didn't have the answer for [Yoon]. We had the answer in that every time we did something good we would fumble it three times or throw an interception."

South Pasadena held on last week for a 31-25 win over Hoover, another team the Tigers lost to a season ago. While the Tigers have passed a bit, their offense has shown a run-heavy approach with four different backs having tallied 75 yards or more.